


Rivers and Roads

by Hobash



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Sabriel - Freeform, human!Gabriel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 20:38:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2164398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobash/pseuds/Hobash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel wakes up in a field, resurrected and human, and doesn't remember much of anything apart from Sam Winchester.</p><p>(Based on a tumblr prompt)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rivers and Roads

**Author's Note:**

> I watch Supernatural sort of off and on and this fic follows the Supernatural plotline sort of off and on. Basically, it starts at Gabriel's canonical death and then branches off into a murky not-quite-canon possibility. I apologize if there are any raging plot discrepancies between this fic and the show.
> 
> There are a few direct quotes from the show, which are italicized. The title of the fic is taken from the song "Rivers and Roads" by The Head and the Heart. 
> 
> I would love feedback!

His transition from archangel to human amounts to little more than a sudden, unpleasant awareness. 

It’s the first thing Gabriel registers when he wakes up on the side of a back road somewhere in Indiana. How all of a sudden, his body demands to be acknowledged, jolts of pain from aching bones, a neck that cramps threateningly if he bends it more than a few centimeters to the right. He feels heavy where he lies in the grass, pressed down to the earth with a weight he never had before. And for the first time, the earth presses back into him; can feel the hardness of the grass at his back and the wetness seeping through his clothing. Though his outfit--- black button down, canvas jacket, and jeans---is the same as he remembers from before, back when he was merely playing a role, it’s heavier now. Restricting. No longer a prop. 

And that, ultimately, is how Gabriel defines his descent into humanity—the word _descent_ chosen specifically, because he might as well be in Hell. He’s a committed showman who has suddenly found himself confined to his costume and stage. Whereas before he wasn’t a part of this world, merely a vacationing bystander that occasionally donned the wig and stopped in for a laugh, he’s now stuck. Stuck and forced to play his part, down to the painful mannerisms. 

It takes hours that first day in Indiana before he hauls himself off the side of the road and begins walking. He finds money in his pocket as he stumbles along, a pain in his left ankle slowing his pace to a slow hobble. Four crumpled one hundred dollar bills. On the horizon in front of him, just close enough to still be visible, is a motel with a nearly empty parking lot and glowing vacancy sign and Gabriel understands, suddenly. The intentionality of his position near a motel, the money conveniently left in his pocket, they suggest that his current situation isn’t some cosmic accident, that something didn’t just happen to get misplaced in the heavens and whoops, now Gabriel’s human. 

Gabriel, Archangel of Judgment, understands that this is a lesson. 

-//-

He spends his first week being a human pissed off. 

He’s pissed off at the scratchiness of the beige motel sheets against his skin when he wakes up in the morning, sweating slightly because the AC is broken and all of a sudden that kind of thing is relevant. He’s pissed off by the gnawing emptiness in his stomach that takes him a full two days to identify as fucking hunger. He’s pissed as he realizes, sitting in a vinyl booth at a diner near the motel and eating a cheeseburger, fries, and diet soda that he spent $9.79 on, that he needs to be worried now about things like money and that hey, maybe he should just settle down, marry a nice girl, and get a 9-5 job. Take out a mortgage. Really complete the whole _human_ thing. 

He’s pissed at the abrupt necessity of pissing. Shitting. Sleeping. Adjusting himself if he sits in one position for too long. He’s pissed that after four days, he can still feel a twinge in his neck when he turns his head to the side (Jesus, how much time do humans need to recover? He gets that they’re not archangels, but this seems particularly excessive). He’s pissed that he’s stuck, not just as a human, but in this motel which is, quite literally, God-forsaken. Robbed of wings, angel mojo, any kind of freedom. 

He’s pissed when he sits alone in his room at night, TV airing an infomercial in the background, and bends his wrists back, testing joints of his fingers. Pain flares brightly when he bends it too far, lighting along his forearm as he forces it past its capacity. Because Gabriel has a capacity now. 

He’s human. Limited. And pissed. 

-//-

It doesn’t take a lot of riddling for Gabriel to conclude that if this whole thing is about a lesson, then it probably means that there’s a way to undo it. He just needs to learn whatever the fuck he needs to learn and he can go back to being what he should be. 

His first guess is a lesson about ‘the beauty of human frailty’ or some poetical bullshit like that, but Gabriel has never had much time for poetry, thinks Shakespeare was an asshole, and also thinks, for the record, that if lessons about human-loving were His aim, then his Father _really_ had the wrong son. 

But, he goes with it. 

He spends no fewer than two hours sitting on the edge of his motel bed with his eyes closed, trying to prove to whomever might be listening that he’s changed. Hands folded, he prays, thinking to himself, _really hard,_ that humans are delicate, fragile creatures that should be treated with a light touch. Like he’s a boisterous two-year-old who has finally learned to be kind to his toys and thus can come out of time out now. 

Lesson learned and recited dutifully, he cracks an eye, expecting to see…something. Wings ripping through the skin of his back and unfolding from behind him. Glass shattering into dust in the window of his motel room. Any kind of return to former holy glory. He is instead confronted with a motel room with a buzzing light above the bathroom sink and an annoying, persistent itch on his upper arm. 

He then begins thinking that maybe his Father just genuinely wants him to play human for a while, maybe see how the other half lives or something, so okay, Gabriel can do that. He walks around his motel room doing human things, performing for an unseen audience like a circus trick---Look! He shits! He washes his hands! He makes the bed!---but when twenty minutes of ironing his jacket yields nothing more than four burnt fingers, he officially gives up on trying to be gracefully human (ha). 

The problem is that in addition to having no idea what _lesson_ it is he’s supposed to be learning, he’s also murky on certain points along his timeline which he feels are probably pretty important to figuring it out. He remembers being an angel. He remembers white light and warmth and family. And he remembers losing it. He remembers the first humans, roaring thunder and skies splitting open, Lucifer and Michael with metaphorical teeth bared. He remembers destruction and black rage. He remembers his family torn apart and he remembers becoming a God, masking fear with make-believe power. Rituals and rites. Unbridled sex and thick blood. He remembers hiding, running, and pretending like he was doing neither. 

And then, nothing. A thickness has settled into the cracks in Gabriel’s mind that he doesn’t think is just a part of being human, even with his low regard for the species. He tries to think of the past year before waking up in Indiana, the week before, even, and… nothing. It’s like he’s trying to focus through a layer of cotton, padding him in and muffling everything that’s not immediately around him, everything other than motel showers with weak water pressure and complimentary donuts on checkout. He remembers being and angel and he remembers being a trickster. Like a human, he paces, but no amount of useless introspection or Butterfingers from the vending machine outside his motel room tell him what the hell he became after that. 

-//-

It happens when Gabriel is walking through a superstore. 

As a further testament to how far he’s fallen, by around the eighth day of his stay at the motel, he is unable to deny that the slightly rank smell that seems to follow him around is, in fact… following him around. It’s probably something he should have picked up on before now---it only took him three days to figure out the necessity of showering thanks to newly active oil glands and he had thought it such a remarkable achievement that he should be allowed back into heaven based on that merit alone. But it takes him considerably longer to put together that clothes, when unwashed, will also eventually develop a stench. And if the side-eyed look of resentment he receives daily from the motel clerk when he leaves to go get food is any indication, Gabriel passed the grace period a while ago. 

He chooses the store because it’s both near the motel and because it’s one that he remembers seeing advertised on television from his long nights in the motel. Though every bit as fluorescent as the thirty-second commercial had led him to believe, the store is distinctly less peppy (and with far fewer grinning employees), but Gabriel doesn’t need peppy. He needs to be human and this store will get the job done. Within five minutes of wandering, he finds himself in the men’s clothing department, surrounded by cotton and polyester and feeling entirely overwhelmed. 

He picks things at random for the most part, a pair of pants similar to the ones he’s currently wearing, a darker version of his canvas jacket, underwear (no-tear elastic!), socks. It’s when he finally makes his way to the shirt section, arm loaded down with the clothing he’s scooped up thus far, that it hits him. 

It’s just a nondescript shirt on a nondescript plastic hanger. But something about it, the thick, scratchy flannel material or the interesting lines of blue and white plaid hit Gabriel like a fucking freight train and he stops abruptly in front of the rack of clothes, causing a woman who had been following closely behind him for five minutes to let out an offended, _“excuse me!”_ as she shoves around him. Extending his hand forward, he touches just the barest tips of his middle and index finger to the fabric is swarmed by a wave of familiar recognition that he nearly drops the clothes he’s holding, can barely pick up on the sensation under his fingers. For the first time since becoming human, he’s entirely unaware of the body he inhabits. 

Sam. 

-//-

He stares at the plaid shirt laid out in front of him on the motel bed. After his quasi-moment of clarity in the store, he had added the shirt---two sizes too big---to his pile. He kept it close, pressed protectively to his chest, and spent the next forty five minutes going through each man’s shirt in the store. He studied each in excruciating, letting his fingers glide over them turn them, running down the chest, pulling at the cuffs. His focus was so extreme that ten minutes into his exploration, a male employee had taken to following him around, hovering no more than ten feet away from him and clearly convinced that Gabriel’s devotion was the early stage of theft. And yet, despite his apparently worrying fixation, no other shirts had yielded any epiphanies. Gabriel had taken his clothes to the cash register, fumbled his money as he tried to pay, and returned to the motel room. 

He reaches forward now and runs his fingers along the fabric again, relieved to feel the same twinge at the back of his mind, still present and unfading. 

Sam. 

The name comes with a face, less tangible than the concreteness of a word, but present nonetheless. He sees dark brown hair, curling at the edges and long enough that it should be obnoxious, yet somehow gearing more toward boyish charm than unrepentant sinner. Dimples that add to the effect. Hazel eyes and a freakishly tall frame adorned in plaid. 

Gabriel flicks distractedly at one of the dark plastic buttons running down the center of the shirt. Lots and lots of plaid. 

It’s not enough. He has a name and face which isn’t the same as having an explanation and no matter how he tries, he can’t squeeze any more meaning out of a mere article of clothing. He has no idea who Sam is or why, of all things, his mind triggered him. He has no way of reaching Sam. Of even knowing whether or not he _should_ reach him. 

But there’s more than familiarity in the plaid beneath his fingers; there’s a warm glow flickering at the edges of his mind, pushing through the fog, straining to come back into focus. 

What he has right now isn’t enough. But in a whole lot of nothing, it’s something. 

-//-

Seeing as Gabriel is on some kind of nonconsensual journey of self-discovery as dictated by his Father, he hopes that He’ll be more inclined to ignore the petty sins committed in the process. 

Two weeks paying for a motel room and shitty diner food and Gabriel’s funds are virtually non-existent. This, combined with the fact that Gabriel’s got a plaid shirt folded and resting on a chair in his room and an indescribable, illogical need to find the person it triggers in his mind, and his options are more or less down to one. 

It’s easier than he expects it to be, which isn’t to say that it doesn’t take a certain amount of effort. He orders his food, eats, waits an ungodly amount of time after finishing his meal---time during which he receives four diet coke refills from a steadily more impatient waitress---before the man sitting in the booth next to him, dressed in a pressed suit with gold cufflinks, finally signals for his check. Gabriel watches as he pulls the black bill holder toward him and slides in a wad of cash, the tip of which extends just beyond the edge of the holder. 

When the waitress passes by Gabriel’s table on the way, he extends his hand and lightly touches the her forearm to get her attention. Smiling genuinely, intentionally letting his eyes crinkle at the corners, he thanks her for the amazing service. 

“Really,” he gushes, leaning forward towards her to speak in a reverent hush. “Thanks for being so great.” 

It’s possible that the delivery is more creepy than kind, but it’s irrelevant when she turns around, putting the bill holder in the side pocket of her apron less than five inches from Gabriel’s face. A smooth, well-timed tug of his hand and he’s grasping crinkled cash, sliding the money discreetly into the front pocket of his jeans as he climbs out of booth. 

Gabriel exits the diner, the bell above the door ringing behind him. As he walks back to the motel, feet crunching over the gravel on the side of the road and his hand resting casually over the rectangular outline in his front pocket, he wonders whether or not this was quite the plan that his Father had in mind

-//-

A plaid shirt and a semi-blurry face aren’t the best roadmaps to go off of, so Gabriel starts moving at random. He gets cash from the local gas station when he stops in to load up on candy and soda and takes a bus through Illinois and into Missouri (The bus itself takes an adjustment, being such a clear reminder of how painfully tied to the Earth he is). On a level that isn’t entirely clear to him, he somehow understands that he’s aiming for Kansas, though he can’t decide on a definitive reason why. Doesn’t know if it’s his Father’s will speaking through him or if it’s just osmosis, that maybe he watched The Wizard of Oz one too many times on late night television as he sat awake in his motel room, plaid shirt clutched in his hand and muscles stiff with lack of movement. 

He goes a bit stir-crazy sitting in a bumping bus and watching flat land go by, broken only by the occasional corn field or billboard. He wonders if he’s supposed to be getting something out of all of this. If maybe his lesson is not to sit next to the man who holds a backpack over his groin on public transport. Or if he’s supposed to be reveling in the majesty of his father’s creation, as seen in every sunset he wakes up to and every sunset he glimpses through whichever window he happens to be looking through, be it bus, motel, or cheap diner. 

He doesn’t understand if he’s being punished, doesn’t understand what the _meaning_ of all of it is. He remembers, as an archangel and Pagan god, being annoyed with humans and their unceasing need to _know_. To try to find meaning and God in everything. To not just leave things alone, accept that there are things you can’t and aren’t _supposed_ to know. That the Lord works in mysterious ways. 

It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit and Gabriel feels himself drifting over more and more into the uncertainty of humanity. The terrifying and constant reminder of his sudden ignorance and helplessness. He feels it as he rides on empty highways, yellow lines blurring by him, taking him to a place that may or may not be the right way to go, on a path that may or may not be the right thing to do. 

-//-

Gabriel is sort of amazed that humans manage to get out of bed every morning. They’re nothing but a mass of vulnerabilities and yet they live like they’re invincible, as though they aren’t constantly faced with an unfathomable amount of things that could potentially kill them or, at the very least, seriously injure them. He doesn’t know if it’s the bravery his Father spoke about or just flat out stupidity. 

He’s made of glass now, too. He’s leaning over the bathroom sink in a motel in Wichita, dragging a razor blade down his cheek when he twitches and nicks himself. A spot of red bleeds through the shaving cream covering half of his face and he braces himself on the sink, because yeah, holy shit, that actually _hurts_. His fingers curl around the sink’s chipped porcelain edge as he feels the literal sting of his mortality. 

He’s tearing off the corner of the thin tissue provided by the motel and sticking it to the tiny cut on his cheek when it hits him. 

He sees himself in a sudden flash of memory, standing invisible and silent in a room where Sam perches on the edge of a motel mattress. There’s a needle in his hand, threaded through, and he stitches up a gash on his upper arm in easy, practiced movements. Once finished, he tears the thread and ties it off with his teeth, taking the bottle of whiskey offered to him by a shorter man with dark blonde hair--- _Dean_ \---and wincing as he sloshes it over his cut. His brother gives him a hearty clap on the shoulder and Gabriel raises his fingers, silently snapping himself out of the room. 

The Gabriel with shaving cream still on his face stumbles, the back of his legs hitting the bathtub behind him as memory burns through him, searing through the fog in his mind. Sam and Dean Winchester. Brothers. Hunters. 

As revelations go, it’s relatively small. It brings him no closer to answers and certainly doesn’t offer him a concrete plan, but it’s another piece of the puzzle locking into place and it ignites something inside of him, a slow-burning crackling in his veins. 

He doesn’t even consider whether or not this is what his Father wants as he grabs a hand towel and wipes off the remainder of the shaving cream, shrugging on one of his button-downs. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s the path he’s supposed to be taking. Finding Sam is the path he’s choosing. 

-//-

Because he can hardly pull open a phonebook and start looking for _Winchester, Sam,_ Gabriel begins scouring newspapers, picking up four or five at a time from whatever gas stations he happens to find and taking them back to whatever motel room he happens to be inhabiting. Sitting cross-legged on motel beds, he flips through them, looking for anything to suggest supernatural activity. Unexplained disappearances. Abnormal murders. Vast power outages. Things that might attract hunters. Things that Sam himself might pick out of a newspaper, sitting in a motel room like the one Gabriel remembers him in. 

His hunts are fruitless in terms of locating Sam; without the assistance of angel senses, he’s not as gifted at discerning paranormal activity from plain normal activity and more often than not, the leads he follows turn out to have entirely human explanations. But Gabriel doesn’t stop, won’t stop, because this, this wandering through the country on a goose chase with an indefinable outcome, it’s _something._ It’s a plan and it’s meaning and occasionally, if only rarely, the cities he travels through pay off in a different way. 

In Tulsa, for example,---where he’s drawn by reports of unexplainable suicides that number in the double digits---Gabriel happens to catch sight of a black car speeding down the highway where he sits at a picnic table outside of an eat-and-go ice cream stall, swirling his tongue through the sprinkles on his chocolate cone. The car’s gone far too fast for him to even fully register it on a conscious level, nothing but dust and spit gravel in its wake, but Gabriel feels a hook deep in his gut. His mind is flooded with pictures of a similar car: 1967 Chevy Impala with tan, leather bucket seats, smelling like oil and age, initials carved into the body of it. 

It takes him around five minutes to realize that his cone has melted and his hand is covered in sticky chocolate and dripping sprinkles. 

Somewhere in Arkansas---which he passes through on his way to Tennessee, following a sudden, unexplainable, children-with-the-power-to-make-things-levitate lead---he grows sick of cheeseburgers (he estimates the numbers he’s eaten by this point is in the low thousands). Craving something healthier, or at least something slightly closer to healthier, he orders an oriental salad at a combination restaurant/bar he finds, a place with neon signs glowing on the walls and a waitress who calls him _“honey.”_ As he’s dribbling dressing over chicken and peanuts, he suddenly gets a flash of Sam sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala, digging into a salad similar to his own, shaking his head in exasperation and smiling slightly as he refused the fast food Dean tried to push on him from the driver’s seat of the impala. _Come on, Sammy,_ said in the teasing voice of a true older brother. _You can’t live on rabbit food._ Gabriel had been there, too, invisible in the backseat. 

He comes back to himself, alone at this bar, and stabs viciously at his salad, wondering why his mind feels the need to supply him with unnecessary information regarding Sam’s eating habits, but not anything like, you know, an _address._

It continues on that way, Gabriel drifting back and forth, following leads in circles, and occasionally getting another mostly unhelpful spark of memory (Dean threatening to cut Sam’s hair while he sleeps, the bitchy face Sam gives him return), until he happens to end up in South Dakota. He wanders through the aisles of the gas station, picking out powdered donuts and peanut butter cookies, and looks up to lock eyes on around two miles of tan trench coat standing in front of him. He looks at the man’s--- _angel’s_ \---face and the name comes out of his mouth before he makes the decision to speak. 

“Castiel.” 

His brother looks back at him with his lips parted and an expression that manages to convey both disbelief and fearful apprehension. 

Eventually, he quietly asks in a stuttering whisper, “Gabriel?” 

Gabriel gives him a forced smile. He can feel plastic-encased powdered donuts smashing between his fingers as his grip unconsciously tightens on the snacks in his hand. 

“Hey, bro.” 

Castiel’s head tips slightly, his eyes narrowing in confusion, and the expression is so familiar that it hits Gabriel like a sucker punch to the stomach. _Castiel. Sam, Dean, and Castiel._

“You…” Castiel begins quietly. A woman squeezes past them through the aisle, but neither takes any notice. “You are no longer…”

Gabriel snorts through his nose. “Yup,” he agrees, letting his lips pop on the _p_. “Stripped of my wings.” He gives a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders that he hopes looks easier than it feels. 

“I don’t understand,” Castiel says, shaking his head, but the conversation is halted when a blonde man lumbers up to them through the aisle, twirling keys between his fingers. 

“Everything, okay, Cas?” he asks, shooting Gabriel a suspicious look before doing an almost comical double take, his keys smacking limply against his hand. “Holy shit,” he breathes out. 

“Dean.” Gabriel greets him with a smirk, because it just seems like the right thing to do. “Long time no see.” 

“You’re dead,” Dean accuses. He shifts where he stands and Gabriel knows he’s reaching for a weapon. Gun, knife, holy oil. “We found your body.” 

“Dean,” Castiel interrupts as Gabriel tries to take in that new bit of information. _Dead. We found your body._ “It’s him.” 

His voice offers no room for disagreement and, after shooting Castiel a hesitant glare, Dean’s hand moves slowly away from his waistband. 

“So, what?” Dean demands with all the articulation Gabriel is beginning to remember from him. “You’re resurrected now?” 

“Not fully,” Cas answers before Gabriel can. “He’s no longer an angel.” 

Dean turns to the angel with a look of distaste crinkling his features. “So what the hell _is_ he?” 

“Human.” 

Gabriel whips around for the source of the deep voice behind him and comes face to face (or, rather, face to chest) with the man he’s spent damn close to a month searching for. 

Everything comes back in an overwhelming rush, relentless and destructive. Gabriel feels like he’s being held underwater, his lungs burning as memory floods over him, pounding against his brain. Sam. Rebellious, stubborn, terrifyingly good Sam. And bright, always bright, brighter than anything Gabriel had ever seen. A soul like liquid fire. 

He remembers keeping tabs on the Winchesters, on Sam, following them and occasionally popping in or just watching them, silent and unseen. He remembers always staying one step ahead or behind for reasons he didn’t fully understand at the time, that he tried to rationalize to them and himself. _I just want it to be over. Play your roles. Why do you think I’ve always taken such an interest in you?_

Gabriel remembers being called out. He remembers the musky, iron smell of an abandoned warehouse as he stood trapped in a ring of holy fire and spoke his name aloud for the first time in centuries. 

_So, which one are you?_

_Gabriel, okay? They call me Gabriel._

He remembers Sam being the one to remind him of who he was, who he is, who he should be, and _oh._ Gabriel might have just had an epiphany in the snack aisle of a gas station in a small town of South Dakota. 

“Human?” Dean’s dulcet aggression pulls Gabriel back to the present, away from Sam who’s looking at him like he’s expecting him to disintegrate in front of his eyes, and he turns around to face the elder Winchester. “How?” 

Sam walks past Gabriel to stand beside Dean and Castiel and all three of them stare back at him. 

“Beats me,” he says after a moment with that same forced breeziness that he can’t seem to stop. Despite finally locating Sam, he doesn’t feel like he thought he would. Rather than experiencing a moment of clarity or some newfound inner peace, he mainly just feels…the same as he has. _Human._ Vulnerable, helpless, and more aware than ever that he’s both. Interacting with the Winchesters is an entirely different beast when he doesn’t have the option of snapping himself away if the conversation doesn’t take a turn he likes and is instead stuck clutching cookies and donuts to him like a selfish five-year-old. “I woke up like this in Indiana,” he adds. 

_“Indiana?”_ Dean spits out like it’s the most offensive thing he’s ever heard. He whips around on Cas. “What the hell is all of this, Cas?” he demands as though he holds the angel solely responsible for Gabriel’s resurrection. 

Castiel, confused and troubled under Dean’s disapproval, remains silent and after a few tense seconds pass, Sam speaks. 

“Dean, maybe we shouldn’t be having this conversation here.” 

They all glance around at the gas station around them and Dean asks, “Where do you suggest we have it, Sam?” 

Sam lowers his head and speaks in a whisper that implies it’s not for Gabriel’s ears. “Why don’t we take him with us to Bobby’s?” 

“What the hell, Sam?” Dean argues in a similar hush. “We’re not taking an _archangel_ to Bobby’s.” 

“He’s not an archangel anymore, Dean!” 

Though Gabriel’s spent the last month reminding himself daily of the same thing, the statement churns through him in a sickening wave. 

“Yeah, according to _him._ ” 

“According to _Cas._ ” 

“This isn’t our problem anyway, Sam! He’s human---so what? Let’s just leave him here.” 

“Have you forgotten what he did for us, Dean? I think we owe him.” 

Gabriel, who, contrary to Castiel, isn’t even pretending not to listen in to this Winchester attempt at a private conversation, pulls back at that. He narrows his mind, sifting through images and memories, trying to pull meaning out of the statement. Some kind of explanation of what exactly it was that he did for the Winchesters once upon a time, but nothing comes. All he remembers, vaguely, is trapping them in Thursdays and TV Land and he has a feeling those aren’t arguments Sam would make in his favor. 

Sam’s previous statement, however, seems to give Dean pause. He cuts his eyes over at Gabriel and flares his nostrils as a muscle clenches and unclenches in his jaw. He sucks in a deep breath and blows it out through his nose, before pressing his lips together and giving a resigned shake of his head like he just _knows_ he’s going to regret this decision at some point in the future. 

“Fine,” he says decidedly in a voice that leaves no room for argument. Turning fully to Gabriel he says, “You’re coming with us.” 

As an archangel, obeying a human on a power trip would have been laughable. Gabriel can practically picture his reaction, the words already forming around the inside of his mouth. _Are you kidding? What makes you chuckleheads think I’m going anywhere with you?_ Followed by a probably too-dramatic exit, snapping fingers, flapping wings, and, if he was in the mood, an irremovable ABBA tape left in the Impala playing “Dancing Queen” on repeat. 

But he’s not an archangel. Not anymore. He’s a man. And on top of that, he’s a not excessively muscular man who stands around 5’8” if he rounds up. And he’s currently being stared down by two over-six-feet-tall Goliaths and one angel. 

Gabriel doesn’t have a choice and that’s kind of the point. So he raises the snacks in his hands, shakes them around, and declares, in a meek attempt at his former glory, like he can stand the height of a skyscraper in a gas station, “I’m not going anywhere before I buy these.” 

-//-

They leave the gas station to go to Bobby’s (the name triggers another memory and Gabriel can just barely recall a shorter, gruff, bearded man with a penchant for trucker hats). Dean heads directly for the driver’s seat which surprises no one and Sam, rather than taking shotgun, slides in the back with Gabriel which surprises everyone. Castiel, who had been heading for the back seat before Sam stopped him with a hand on his forearm and gestured to the front beside Dean, shoots the younger Winchester a curious look, stopping where he stands to stare at him intensely, like he’s trying to figure something out. He ultimately says nothing, just presses his lips together---Gabriel can see more and more of Dean in Castiel’s inflections---and climbs in beside Dean. 

No one speaks for the entirety of the journey (Dean doesn’t even play music), and Gabriel spends it watching Sam out of the corner of his eye. Though he can’t see his face---he’s turned away from him, staring out the window---he watches his fingers. Watches as they tap against his knee, an unknown frenetic rhythm. 

Eventually, after Gabriel’s eaten his way through both donuts and cookies (which he made a point of offering to everyone except for Dean who had threatened to pull over and leave Gabriel on the side of the road if he found _one crumb back there, I swear_ ), they pull up in front of a large Victorian house. From where he sits in the backseat, Gabriel can see a salvage yard expanding back behind it, hollowed out car bodies strewn and discarded wheels stacked. 

“Think we should give him a heads up?” Sam asks from beside Gabriel, breaking the silence as he leans forward to speak to Dean in the front seat. 

Dean turns off the car and pulls the key out of the ignition. “Like what?” he asks. “Hey, Bobby, turns out the trickster isn’t dead. Oh, and he’s human now. Oh, and he’s here.” 

Sam bites on his lower lip and glances apprehensively at the house looming in front of them. “Think he’ll try to shoot him?” 

Dean shrugs his shoulders indifferently. “Probably not.” 

Which is apparently good enough for him, Sam, and Castiel. At once, the three of them begin fumbling for door handles, stepping out of the car and Gabriel has no choice but to follow, slamming the car door behind him as they walk up the front steps to Bobby’s house. 

He doesn’t try to shoot Gabriel, as it turns out. When Bobby answers the door and catches sight of the four of them, he just lets out an exasperated sigh and slumps his shoulders slightly in defeat, like deep down he’s always expected Dean, Sam, and Castiel to escort a resurrected angel-turned human to his doorstep and the day has finally come. Clearing his throat gruffly, he steps aside and gestures behind him with his thumb. 

“Well, get in, then.” 

They end up at the small, rectangular kitchen table, made of dark wood and able to sit four, albeit in a somewhat cramped fashion. After some awkward starting and stopping as they all go for chairs at the same time, they eventually settle on their positions: Gabriel and Sam sit on one side, Dean and Cas sit on the other, and Bobby pulls up a chair from his den and puts it at the head of the table, like a father presiding over wayward children. 

“You boys wanna explain this?” he barks out after a minute. 

They all look at each other and then Sam supplies, helpfully, “Uh, Gabriel’s not dead.” 

“And he’s no longer an angel,” Castiel adds. 

“He’s human,” Dean clarifies. 

Bobby looks back and forth between the four of them for a few seconds before wordlessly putting two hands on the edge of the table and shoving his chair out, wood grating over more wood, and walking to the fridge. He pulls out a beer, pops the cap and takes a long swig before grabbing four more and depositing them on the table. Sam and Dean immediately reach for theirs and after a second, Gabriel does the same. Castiel glances at Dean and then slowly pulls his bottle closer to him, leaving it unopened on the table. 

“So he’s back from the dead,” Bobby states, scratching his fingers through the wiry hair on his cheeks. “Why?” 

“We don’t know,” Sam says. He turns to look at Gabriel and Gabriel shrugs. 

“I woke up like this in Indiana about a month ago,” he starts, gesturing to his body to imply that by _this_ he means _human._ He opens his mouth, intending to explain that up until a little over an hour ago, he wasn’t even aware that he had died and come back from anything, but cuts himself off at the last second, saying instead, “That’s all I know.” 

Sam must pick up on something in Gabriel’s voice that neither Dean nor Castiel do. His head turns slightly toward Gabriel, like he knows he’s withholding, but he doesn’t call him on it and Gabriel avoids his gaze, taking a sip of his beer and swilling the bitter liquid around his mouth. 

“What do you think it means?” Dean asks Bobby. 

“The hell should I know?” Bobby asks. “But this isn’t exactly the first time we’ve dealt with a resurrection, is it?” He pointedly looks back and forth between Dean and Castiel. 

“Yeah, resurrecting humans who have a purpose to serve, but resurrecting an archangel?” Dean asks. “Who would do that? Is this some kind of new, powerful monster we’re dealing with here?” 

“My Father is the only one capable of resurrecting a dead archangel,” Castiel cuts in, shaking his head. “This is His work.” His eyes shift to Gabriel and Gabriel drops the gaze, focusing on a spot on the table in front of him. “It is possible that Gabriel, too, has a purpose to serve.” 

“But why bring him back human?” Sam asks. “What’s the purpose of that?” 

“Punishment?” Gabriel offers, voicing his long-standing idea. “I haven’t exactly been a saint these past few centuries. Maybe He finally got sick of my Pagan shit and this is supposed to be some kind of, I don’t know, ironic lesson in humility.” 

Without any clear answers or theories, and having said all there really is to say on the subject, a silence falls amongst the four of them. Dean finishes his beer bottle and, without being prompted, Castiel nudges his over to him. Dean smiles at him as he takes it, a small, understated acknowledgement of their connection, and Gabriel feels something almost familiar tingle at the back of his mind. Sam’s arm is less than an inch from his on the table and he feels its presence like a heat. 

As the late afternoon wears on, shifting seamlessly into pink, saturated evening, they slowly break up. Bobby retires to his den to research, re-emerging every so often for another beer or to grumble under his breath about “idjits” and “angels.” Ten minutes or so later, Dean heads out to the salvage yard, with Cas trailing in tow, under the cover of “working on some of the cars out there,” but Gabriel knows it’s just an excuse for them to stand across from each other, sending mooning eyes back and forth, and discussing Gabriel without him there. _Are we sure we can trust him? How do we know there isn’t more to this than he’s telling us?_

When Dean stands up from the table to leave, he meets Sam’s eye and jerks his head over his shoulder, indicating that Sam should follow, but Sam declines with a firm, shake of his own head. They have an extremely unsubtle, silent conversation that includes lots of raised eyebrows ( _Whatever you’re thinking isn’t a good idea, Sam_ ) and tightened lips ( _Just go, Dean. I’ll catch up later_ ), but eventually Dean relents. The back door of Bobby’s house slams off of its wooden frame and through the window, Gabriel watches as Dean and Cas disappear amongst the stacked, winding bodies of cars. 

“You want another one of those?” Sam asks. Gabriel turns to him and Sam nods down at the almost empty beer bottle in front of him. 

“Sure.” Sam stands up and walks over to the fridge, bending over and pulling out two more bottles from Bobby’s seemingly unlimited supply, and Gabriel observes, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to get me drunk for an ulterior motive.” 

Sam pauses where he had been getting into his chair, but lets out a reluctant breath of laughter a second later when he sees the teasing look on Gabriel’s face. 

“Still doing the innuendo thing, huh?” he mutters, passing Gabriel his beer. “Even after a resurrection.” 

“The ‘innuendo thing?’” Gabriel affects a look of deep wounding. “That’s just my personality, kiddo.” 

The nickname slips out without Gabriel thinking about it, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it, or on the mental twinge it elicits, because Sam is laughing more openly now, his previous hesitancy fading. Gabriel watches dimples flash just briefly in his cheeks and feels a genuine, unexpected smile tug at his own lips for, he thinks, the first time since becoming human. It almost feels familiar, sitting here with Sam, passing one liners back and forth. He almost feels like himself. 

“So,” he says after their laughter has dwindled and they’ve both taken another swig of their respective beers. “What’d you wanna ask me, Sam?” 

Sam raises his eyebrows and gives a shake of his head that’s clearly supposed to imply innocence. “What makes you think I wanted to ask you something?” 

Raising an unimpressed eyebrow, Gabriel says, “When does that big brain of yours ever _not_ have a question?” 

“It’s just…” Sam gnaws on his bottom lip, seeming at first very aware of the words he’s choosing, before apparently throwing up a mental _fuck it_ and just hurling himself in. “What’s it like?” 

“Well, that’s awfully generic,” Gabriel replies easily, like he doesn’t know exactly what Sam is talking about. “What’s _what_ like?” 

Sam gives him an impatient, _cut the bullshit_ kind of look and Gabriel takes another swig of his beer to hide the smile that unwillingly pulls at his lips. Sam. Always such a pain in the ass. 

“Being human,” he clarifies. 

“You’re human,” Gabriel points out. 

“Yeah, but I didn’t use to be an archangel of judgment,” Sam counters. 

Gabriel lets out a quiet sigh. He spins his beer bottle in small turns on the wood table, running his fingers through the condensation that drips down it. “Honestly?” he says. “It fucking sucks.” 

Sam stares back at him patiently, waiting. 

Taking a deep breath in, Gabriel says, “I hurt all the time. I ache all the time. I get tired, hungry, sick. I slept on my neck wrong a few nights ago and I _still_ can’t turn it fully.” 

Sam’s lips twitch, but he sobers quickly when Gabriel shoots him a look. 

“I feel trapped and confused and…” he glances away, searching for the right word: _contained, forsaken, useless._ “…small.” He says finally, quietly, meeting Sam’s eye. “I feel really, really small.” 

Sam nods slowly. His puppy-dog eyes are wide and sympathetic as he leans over the table and says, sincerely, “Gabriel, you’ve _always_ been short.” 

It takes a second to register and then laughter, bright and joyful, bubbles up inside of Gabriel. It’s uncontrollable and he throws his head back as it racks through his body, face twisting up and stomach aching where he crumples over the table, sucking in heaving breaths of air. Tears blur at the corner of his eyes and he’s aware of Sam cracking up across from him, though Gabriel thinks it’s less to do with his joke and more to do with Gabriel’s reaction. 

The sound of a heavy chair scraping drowns out their hysterics and Bobby appears in the doorway. 

“What the _hell_ is goin’ on in here?” 

“Nothing,” Sam gets out between breaths. He meets Gabriel’s eye and whatever composure they had been striving toward deserts them as they’re overcome again, leaning together and giggling like two school boys with a secret joke. “It’s nothing, Bobby.” 

Bobby looks back and forth at them for a few seconds before apparently deciding that this is a battle he doesn’t currently have the strength for. Giving them one last eye roll, accompanied by a vehement _idjits,_ he stomps out of the kitchen. Seconds later, they hear the scrape of his chair in the study. 

“Shit,” Gabriel sighs, the occasional bubble of laughter escaping him as he winds down. “I think that’s the hardest I’ve laughed in a _month,_ kiddo.” 

“Yeah,” Sam states, leaning forward over the table. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. What exactly have you been doing this past month? You said you woke up in Indiana, right? But we found you in South Dakota.” 

Gabriel drops his gaze. “I’ve been sort of…wandering.” 

It’s a vague answer at best and clearly not enough for Sam _refuses to accept vague answers_ Winchester. 

“Wandering,” he repeats, voice laced with skepticism. 

“I…I didn’t remember anything when I first woke up, Sam, and I still don’t remember a lot, but…I remembered you.” 

Sam blinks a few times and pulls back slightly across the table, watching Gabriel curiously. 

“I didn’t remember all at once,” Gabriel continues quickly, avoiding Sam’s eye and staring down at his hands on the table. “It came to me in flashes, sort of. Your face in one town. Your name in another. When I remembered that you were a hunter, I started looking newspapers, trying to guess where you might be headed so I could find you.” He lets out a quiet breath and finally looks up. “You were all I had, kiddo.” 

Sam glances away. He stares unseeingly out of the window by the kitchen table. His face creases in a familiar way as he nods his head in thought, scraping his teeth over his lower lip. 

“I don’t know what all of this is, Sam,” Gabriel admits quietly after a few silent seconds. Sam turns back to him. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be getting from this.” 

His voice wavers as he speaks and he clears his throat, tilting his head up when he feels wetness sting warmly at the corner of his eyes. He wants to scream with how human he feels in this moment. How human he _is._

“We’ll figure it out, Gabriel,” Sam comforts him immediately. Tentatively, he reaches out and slowly sets his hand over Gabriel’s own on the table, like he’s a skittish animal (amazing: from archangel to bunny). He gives him a warm, reassuring smile. “It’s what we do.” 

The heat from Sam’s hand winds through Gabriel, grounding him, and he nods quickly, taking a deep breath in to steady himself. 

“Is there some place I can crash here?” he asks, falling back on the one benefit of being human: the option of faking exhaustion/illness to get out of a situation. “I’m beat.” 

“Yeah, of course,” Sam agrees quickly. He stands up and removes his hand from Gabriel’s, leaving Gabriel feeling colder, suddenly, than he has in a long time. “Bobby has a few spare bedrooms upstairs. Follow me.” 

Bobby gives the two of them a suspicious look when they pass through the study, but Sam shoots down any questions with a simple, non-debatable, “Gabriel’s tired, Bobby. He’s gonna sleep in one of the upstairs rooms.” Sam leads him up a pair of creaking, wooden stairs and into the upstairs hallway. He opens the door of the first room they come to, exposing a simple bedroom with a double bed and a wooden dresser, the faded, floral wallpaper barely visible in the quickly declining light of the day. 

“Is this okay?” Sam asks, stepping around him and turning on the lamp on the bedside table. There’s a low click and a warm glow seeps into the room. 

“It’s fine.” 

Sam turns around when he reaches the doorway. Running a hand through his hair, he catches Gabriel’s eye. “We’ll figure this out.” 

“Sure.” 

Sam looks like he wants to say more (that damn compulsive need he and Dean have to fix everything), but in the end he doesn’t. He gives Gabriel one last sad attempt at an encouraging the smile, an expression which stops just short of reaching his eyes. 

Gabriel collapses onto the bed after he leaves, body half on and half off, his legs hanging over the edge. It appears that there was some truth in his lie from earlier. He doesn’t even think to remove his boots before his eyes slide closed and he’s breathing evenly, body rising and falling on the bed beneath him. 

-//-

It doesn’t feel like a dream at first. 

Even in the moments after he’s woken, it _still_ doesn’t register as untrue. Gabriel’s there. He’s there in a chintzy hotel room, relaxed on a sofa as he watches Sam and Dean argue back and forth before deciding to make himself known. Typical, well-timed snark. 

_You think I’m behind all of this?_ he asks. _I’m here to save your ass._

_You wanna pull us out of the fire?_ Dean stares back at him skeptically, radiating human arrogance. Like most everything the Winchester’s do, it annoys Gabriel. Behind Dean, Sam glares at Gabriel, wary and distrusting. 

_Bingo._

He’s Loki here, amongst these pagan gods. A trickster. Not an angel. Not Gabriel. He hasn’t been Gabriel in a long time and he’s terrified of re-donning the title. Of the responsibility, the righteousness that comes with it. 

_Why don’t you sack up and help us take out Lucifer?_

_You can’t be serious._

_Deadly._

_Well, good luck with that. Me? I’m blowing Jones town._

Because that’s what he does. He runs. He hides. Disappears to some remote corner of the world where he can play at exacting divine justice. He saves his own ass, unlike the obnoxious need the Winchesters’ have to constantly sacrifice themselves. Gabriel has news for the Winchesters. You know what being selfless gets you? Killed. That’s it, bucko. Why have they never understood that? 

He’s quiet for a few seconds in the back of the Impala, the need to run trickling down his spine. Sam isn't here. He's inside, doing whatever it is he does that makes him so much more than Gabriel will ever be. Saving lives other than his own. Just because he's able. 

_Dean, I can’t kill my brother._

_Can’t or won’t?_

Maybe it’s just too much time spent around the Winchesters, some kind of osmosis effect. Or maybe it’s something else, something good and bright that he sees in humans. In Dean. In _Sam._ Something he wants to protect. Maybe Sam, young fierce Sam, reminds him of himself, or reminds him of who he wants to be. But suddenly, Gabriel’s there, crouching with the Winchesters behind an overturned table in the hotel’s conference room. The room is painfully ordinary if one discounts the discarded bodies of pagan gods littering the floor, the occasional blood spurt on the walls around them, and the fallen angel that stands less than ten feet from them. Lucifer’s eyes are vacant, his arms coated in dark, sticky blood up to the elbow, and the skin of his vessel is covered in open sores, spots where his blackened spirit has eaten through his humanity, unable to be contained. It strikes genuine fear through Gabriel, the kind of honest terror he hasn’t felt in a long time: an angel’s light can’t permeate a human vessel, but an angel’s darkness can. 

He meets Sam’s eye where they crouch. The words are for him. 

_Better late than never, huh?_

Then he’s pacing around the room; he and Lucifer walking a slow, perfect circle around each other as they speak, accusations bearing the weight of centuries of silence fired back and forth. His angel blade weighs heavy where he grasps it tightly in his hand and he raises it in front of him in a clear threat. He’s finally, _finally_ standing his ground. Choosing a side. Answering to his name. 

_You’re willing to die for a pile of cockroaches?_ Lucifer asks. _Why?_ His voice is calm, deceptively soft, but the anger and power beneath it surge like a current, turning each word lethal. 

_Because Dad was right._ Gabriel thinks of Sam, his bravery, his righteousness, and tightens the grip on his blade. _They are better than us._

 _Brother, don’t make me do this._

Gabriel jerks awake in the bed with his lungs burning, fire and fury pounding through his head and in front of his eyes. A sharp ripping feeling tears just under his ribcage, in the center of his chest, and he sucks in harsh, ragged gasps as he grabs frantically at his chest, feeling healed skin beneath his fingers, a heart beating in a rapid, yet steady rhythm against his ribcage. He sits there for a minute or two with his hand held tight against him, feeling the thunder echoing throughout his entire body. The room is entirely dark around him, but he’s unaware of it. 

He rises after a few minutes. Feeling around in the dark, he pads across the room and finds the door, pulling it open into a dark hallway. The house is almost entirely silent, but when he ducks his head out into the hallway, he can see a small, warm light spreading across the dark wood first floor, dipping around walls and furniture. As he gets closer, he realizes the light is coming from the kitchen and when he reaches the doorway, he sees Sam sitting at the kitchen table, elbows resting on the table and chin resting on the platform created by his folded hands. His eyes are unfocused and worried, staring blankly out in front of him. 

When Gabriel whispers, “Sam,” in a cracked voice, he does a double take, standing up quickly from the table. He makes a move like he’s going to approach Gabriel, but then stops himself, hovering uncomfortably over his chair, like he’s unsure whether or not it would be a good idea. 

“Gabriel,” he says, looking concerned. “Are you okay?” 

“I remember,” Gabriel croaks out. He’s still shaky where he stands, one hand pressed just below his sternum, like he can still feel the wound. “I remember how I died.” 

Comprehension flickers over Sam’s face, like a piece of the puzzle has just clicked into place, and he runs a hand through his hair. “You didn’t remember before,” he states in understanding. 

Gabriel shakes his head faintly and continues, “And I don’t just remember how I died. I remember _why_ I died.” 

Sam opens his mouth and closes it again, watching Gabriel. 

“For you, kiddo,” he says with a small smile and a short burst of a laugh. This is it, isn’t it? “I did it for you.” 

“Gabe,” Sam begins quietly and it rings through Gabriel like salvation. 

In a few quick steps, he’s across the tile of Bobby’s kitchen and pressed into Sam, feeling the warmth and weight of something much bigger than himself close around him. When fingers run through his hair and cup around the back of his neck, Gabriel gives in to it and lets himself be pulled up to Sam’s lips. 

Sam kisses Gabriel like he’s dying (No, Gabriel thinks, Sam kisses him like he _did_ die). His movements, at first restrained to a soft, questioning brush of his lips, quickly turn desperate. His fingers twist harder in Gabriel’s hair as he bends down, curling his body around him like he’s trying to hold him here. He meets Gabriel’s lips over and over, a wet dry overlap that Gabriel feels through his entire body, and Gabriel pushes back into him with a hunger, sucking on his bottom lip. He almost wants to cry with the way their noses occasionally bump into each other, or how all of a sudden he needs to pause every minute or so to come up for air. This is what it means to be human. Inconveniently, beautifully human. 

Sam’s hands reach down and grip just under Gabriel’s ass, easily lifting him up off the ground, and Gabriel instinctively wraps his legs around his waist. They pass out of the kitchen, Gabriel worrying his teeth over Sam’s neck and Sam breathing heavily into Gabriel’s ear, and into the living room off the front hall. Sam eases him down onto the couch and then clambers on top off him, pressing his weight into Gabriel as he presses his lips repeatedly over his neck. 

“This is a first, right?” Gabriel manages to whisper as Sam’s fingers tug at his jeans, the tips of them brushing over the line of Gabriel’s hipbone. _His_ hipbone. Not his vessel’s. The distinction, suddenly, feels almost unbearably good, like a warm, heavy weight settling in Gabriel’s lower stomach. He arches up further into Sam, seeking, needing to feel more. 

“A first?” Sam asks. 

“Yeah.” Gabriel lifts his hips as Sam pulls off his jeans, discarding them over the side of the couch before awkwardly kicking out of his own. “We didn’t have a steamy, sordid affair that I don’t remember, did we?” 

Sam laughs into his neck. He repositions himself on Gabriel and Gabriel feels the ridge of his cock against his hip bone. “Not unless you count inappropriate sexual puns, no.” 

“Don’t underestimate the power of a pun,” Gabriel breathes out. The last word trails off in a harsh breath as Sam unceremoniously licks over his palm and wraps his fist around Gabriel’s length. He gives a few, slow pulls, and Gabriel groans aloud, wrapping his arms around Sam’s neck as Sam thrusts his groin into the dip of Gabriel’s hip in response. 

This is all new for Gabriel, so different from anything he’s felt before. He was never a part of this world and now he is. Sensations that were previously muted to him as an angel burst alive, nerve endings in his skin exploding and reforming, sinew and muscle all reacting to the gentle press of fingertips against his hips, to wet lips feathering over his neck. He doesn’t realize that he’s begun to shake, body trembling uncontrollably, until Sam presses further into him to still him, holding him grounded as he brings him closer. 

Gabriel was kidding himself if he thought that he had had sex before. What’s happening now is so removed from what he did as a pagan god that there can’t even be a comparison. It wasn’t even sex then, just a ceremony in the middle of a field with a Loki mask on, a different form of running. Here, beneath Sam, he’s exposed and _alive_ and when he comes, spilling wetness between their bodies in a shuddering rush, it feels like nothing less than redemption, pure and blinding beneath his skin. 

Sam, himself, comes a few moments later, his hips grinding against Gabriel in a frantic roll as Gabriel runs his hands through his hair, thankful suddenly for the obnoxious length. They collapse together and Gabriel can’t find it in him to care about his cramping leg or his hampered breathing. He twists his fingers through the curling ends at the nape of Sam’s neck and smiles when the man shifts above him.

The thick curtains covering the window in the living room are parted just slightly and through them, Gabriel can see the dark black of the night sky, dotted with the soft glow of stars. It takes him a few minutes of lazy pondering to figure out why they suddenly seem different, but then it comes to him, lying there on a worn couch in an old, rickety house, Sam’s weight resting on top of him.

Small. The stars seem small.


End file.
